There But For The / by Ali Smith

At a dinner party hosted by Eric and Genevieve Lee, a seemingly ordinary middle-aged man named Miles Garth gets up from his place at the table, leaves the room and locks himself inside the home's upstairs compartment. Speaking not a word over the next few days, only submitting written notes under the door for food and ignoring all pleas from both the home's owners and the other guests to come out, Garth seems content to simply stay put. When all of Miles' friends and existing family--he doesn't have much--try and talk him out of the room to no avail, a desperate but civil Genevieve begins contacting his acquaintances (found mostly from his cell phone and derived from clues inside his jacket pockets), ultimately finding only four willing individuals who graciously agree to lend assistance. The only problem is that the called-upon parties scarcely know Miles at all, many of them having only crossed paths with him at random and in some cases unable to remember the occasion in which they met. Gradually, however, the eclectic quartet--Anna, a forty-ish woman who met Miles on a school trip nearly three decades ago; Mark, a former colleague; May, an octogenarian; and a ten-year-old boy named Brooke--all recall their time spent with Miles and, through their efforts, steadily begin to shed some light on his peculiar predicament. 

Smith has a gift for writing puns, though actually it could be said that her overall wordplay is impressive for it's nuanced approach and subtle styling. It's not like she's new on the scene; her 2005 novel The Accidental won of the Whitbred and was nominated for the Man Booker. But her talent has had a hard time getting to the forefront, maybe because she's British, Scottish actually, and her stories aren't so comparatively original as to garner prominent notice. Which might be why this book, a novel set along similar lines as Jennifer Egan's Visit From The Goon Squad or even Bed by David Whitehouse, is a bit of a hard sell to traditionalists. For one thing, there's no direct quotes; the entire narrative flows within an oddly removed, stream-of-consciousness pattern, elucidating the characters through interior monologues and exterior exposition. Conversations happen, just not in front of the reader. They're sort of in the mind's eye of the author who monitors things with a omniscient, documentary-style voyeurism, usually irregardless of time or place ("Already Anna has been goosed, for the first time in her life, by a seventeen-year-old swot (who, in twenty years' time, will have become an internationally renowned Professor of Theoretical Physics). At the time of it happening she has no idea that this is what's happening . . ."). This isn't a particularly difficult thing to get used to, in fact it's usually nice to have a narration of the actual narration, a kind of voice-over to the action taking place. But the story's pretty non-linear and there's an odd blend of details and descriptions which may distort the reader's perspective. Even this, however, shouldn't detract from the book, or the writer's overall merit. (FIC SMITH)

The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics / by John Pollack

Ever heard that "to write with a broken pencil is pointless"? How about that "when fish are in schools they sometimes take debate" or that "a criminal's best asset is his lie ability"? Always "be true to your teeth or they will be false to you" and "you'll feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it". For as long as puns have been around, people have been telling each other achingly bad jokes like back when "ancient orators tended to babylon" or "when backwards poets wrote inverse". But some people think the pun as more than just the lowest form of humor. Author of this delightfully groan-worthy book on the history of puns, former Clinton speechwriter and winner of the O'Henry Pun-Off John Pollack believes that "punning" virtually revolutionalized language and has been instrumental in the integration and development of modern civilization.

The pun is more than just a lame (pun)ch line, something history testifies to. From the ancient Egyptians whose heiroglyphics attest to the humorous double-meaning symbols to the French wits of the 17th century, puns have always been at the forefront of exposition and repartee. In the English language particularly, the Norman Conquest diversified the vocabulary to a point that by Elizabethan times, "the play upon words was not merely an elegance of style and a display of wit; it was also an means of emphasis and an instrument of persuasion" (p. 63). The art of the pun is, even today, still a worthy tool for any wannabe wordsmythes, encouraging the broad and cross-cultural use of words to communicate intelligence. Because of its utility, puns are a universally acknowledged currency for any format of both oral and written correspondence and almost any type of social interaction, even texting. Pollack says that the pun will never die. Moreover, it will continue to proliferate as a low-brow gag and a device to be infused during the most proper of conversations. No matter what, it will always be more than just 'some antics'. (808.7 POLLACK)